CT - Catholic Telegraph

The many faces of wisdom

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Wisdom 7:7-11.

It has only been three weeks since we heard from the Book of Wisdom. Readings from Wisdom occur eight times during the three-year Sunday cycle, all of them assigned for Sundays in ordinary time. During ordinary time, we experience the annual retelling of the public life and ministry and teaching of Jesus, and the recurrence of readings from Wisdom may be meant to suggest that wisdom is a kind of basic theme that underlies all that Jesus said and did in His public ministry.

This Sunday’s reading is from the second main section of the book. This section runs from the end of chapter six through chapter ten. It is a reflection on the nature and origin of wisdom that is put into the mouth of King Solomon, the wise man par excellence.

This Sunday’s reading describes the value that Solomon puts on the wisdom that he has asked for and received from God. Wisdom is better than power and wealth, more attractive than things like precious stones and gold and silver. It is more lovable than health and beauty, more appealing even than basic necessities such as light. Everything that is good comes with wisdom, and to gain wisdom is to gain riches beyond counting.

What is this wisdom about which Solomon waxes so lyrical? Scholars tell us that wisdom, as presented in Sacred Scripture, is a many-faceted reality. It consists most basically in knowing how to conduct one’s life so as to attain true happiness.

The wise person is the person who knows how to make the most of his or her earthly existence, not in the sense of acquiring an abundance of the good things of this world, but in the sense of knowing what is really worth the effort of human pursuit. Wise people know what is really important and they know how to go about getting it.

But wisdom is not just a human quality. God has wisdom, too. Indeed, God is the source of all wisdom. It is God who has created the world with all its blessings, God whose providence leads every creature toward the end that He has destined for it. One could say that wisdom is the mind of God which human beings have been invited to know and share, not because they have earned it or deserved it, but simply because God is generous.

This reading about the value of wisdom seems to have been chosen to illustrate the gospel reading (Mark 10:17-27). There we see a man coming to Jesus to ask what he had to do to inherit eternal life. In effect, he was asking how he could acquire wisdom. Jesus answers by encouraging him to keep the commandments and secondly, to detach himself from earthly wealth.

The man goes away sad, because, although he had kept the commandments from his youth, the lure of wealth seemed to pull him more forcefully than the call of the Lord. He did not prefer wisdom to gold and silver and priceless gems as did the teacher of our first reading. As a matter of fact, what God was offering him took second place to the security of possessions.

Some people (maybe all of us at one time or another) look on the commandments and on the teaching of Jesus as a complex of rules and regulations, which, if observed with exactitude, will earn them salvation. Because they are dealing with rules and regulations, these people tend to observe them the same way they observe the rules and regulations for their income tax: do whatever you have to do to stay on the right side of the law, but nothing more.
People like this do not gain true wisdom because they are not really seeking wisdom. They are seeking a kind of cut rate spiritual security, to be bought from God as cheaply as possible.

What God offers us in His commandments, what Jesus offers us in His teaching is the way to wisdom. If we observe what God asks of us, we will live as God intends us to live. We will be in harmony with what God planned His creation to be. We will be wise. We will find ourselves, in the end, in a situation of total peace and fulfillment, in eternal communion with the Lord.

The core of Jesus’ preaching was the Kingdom of God, that ultimate state of well-being in which God is fully in charge, in which God’s creatures are responsive to God’s providence, in which their lives are all that God intended them to be. The Kingdom of God is another term for wisdom. This Sunday’s readings remind us that there is nothing more precious, nothing more important.

For reflection and discussion

How have I experienced God’s law as wisdom?

How has God’s law enriched me?